Beijing’s Man in the Anglican Communion

Jun 21, 2021 by

by David Goodhew, Living Church:

Justin Welby and official Anglican structures have been silent over the oppression of Uighur Muslims, the people of Hong Kong, and Chinese people generally. Concerning oppression elsewhere they are often much more vocal. For official Anglicanism, Black lives matter (sometimes); Chinese lives, not so much.

Why so silent? There are a range of reasons, not all of them dishonorable. But one key reason is the presence at the heart of official Anglicanism of Archbishop Paul Kwong. He chairs the key Anglican institution, the Anglican Consultative Council (ACC) — and Kwong has consistently promoted the Chinese Communist Party’s stance.

What is the Anglican Consultative Council (ACC)?

The ACC is one of the four “Instruments of Communion” of the Anglican Communion (the other three being: the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Lambeth Conference, and the Primates’ Meeting). The council meets every two or three years in varying locations worldwide and has a permanent secretariat. The ACC has met four times since 2009, during which the Lambeth Conference has not met at all. Its most recent meeting, in 2019, was itself in Hong Kong. The lack of a Lambeth conference for the last 13 years has further boosted the ACC, since it is one of the few means by which the Communion congregates.

The Record of Archbishop Kwong

To understand the role of Archbishop Kwong, it is important to recognize the nature of the Chinese Communist Party. Leading human rights organizations such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, as well as a widening range of democratic governments, recognize massive abuses of human rights in China. These center on the Muslim Uighur people, but also on Hong Kong, where its democratic accountability and the independence of judicial process are rapidly being dismantled. Beyond this, hopes among Western powers that China was inching toward a greater respect for the individual and away from the one-party state have been dashed under the rule of President Xi. When politicians as different as Nancy Pelosi and Mike Pompeo agree on the reprehensible nature of China’s conduct, surely that is telling us something.

Read here

See also:

When a Free Society Becomes a Police Stateby Bari Weiss. For 26 years, the pro-democracy tabloid Apple Daily was a thorn in Beijing’s side. This week, the paper closed for good. What its death means for Hong Kong — and for us all.

 

 

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